Karol Szymanowski’s fascinating compositional style passed through many changes before finding the sensual, languorous quality it’s admired for. This collection of songs sweeps through the composer’s different periods, from the German expressionism-influenced Lieder on poems by Dehmel, to the Polish folk music-inspired Slopiewne, through the exotic Songs of the Infatuated Muezzin. Szymanowski’s vocal writing is no joke, requiring long, high “sostenuto” notes, perfect legato technique, and above all an extreme beauty of tone. Soprano Claudia Barainsky’s soubrette-like timbre doesn’t seem best-suited for the task–and certainly not to bring the music to its ecstatic boiling point. Her phrasings are often roughly shaped, as if she didn’t know what to do with Szymanowski’s endless ornamental coloraturas; and despite Axel Bauni’s clever accompaniment, the piano is no match for Szymanowski’s own lush orchestrations of the Fairy Princess and Muezzin Songs. The recording keeps an unnatural low level all along, and puts the piano too much in the background. English translation is given only for the Dehmel songs, while James Joyce’s poems from Op. 54 are nowhere to be found–“in respect of Joyce’s heirs’ will”, says Orfeo.
